Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Sam I Am

Children really are the best. They are
hilarious and full of wonder. No two days are ever the same when working with
them. But don’t get me wrong, they can also be stressful and incredibly
difficult to keep under control. For those kids that regularly misbehave, then
Applied Behaviour Analysis can help. So lets look at the example of Sam:

Sam is 4 years old. He is small for his
age, and has brown hair and green eyes. He is always smiling and is an absolute
pleasure to teach. The problem is he won’t do any of the work unless it
is directly related to trains. So this is where applied behaviour analysis
comes in. How do you get Sam to sit down and participate in the planned work?
Well we have already figured out step 1. The target behaviour is getting Sam to
participate in work that isn’t related to trains. Step 2 is to select an
appropriate reinforcer (Osborne, 1969). So whenever Sam finishes a piece of
work, he can then colour in a picture of a train (which he absolutely loves to
do). This would have to occur straight after the completion of his work, so
other behaviours don’t accidentally get reinforced (Wolfle, 1932). The number
of times the work is completed must be recorded on a daily basis so that they
can be compared over time. Also, the target behaviour needs to be monitored
before the event to set a baseline for comparison.

Now, thanks to the wonder of Applied
Behaviour Analysis, Sam does the work that has been set and he is rapidly advancing up the levels.

Oliver Stoney

References

Osborne, J. G. (1969). FREE‐TIME AS A REINFORCER IN THE MANAGEMENT OF CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR.Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,2(2), 113-118.

Wolfle, H. M. (1932). Conditioning as
a function of the interval between the conditioned and the original stimulus.The Journal of General Psychology,7(1), 80-103.